We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

 

‘For there’s more enterprise
in walking naked.’
—W. B. Yeats

And I walked naked
from the beginning

breathing in
my life,
breathing out
poems,

arrogant in innocence.

But of the song-clouds my breath made
in cold air

a cloak has grown,
white and,
where here a word
there another
froze, glittering,
stone-heavy.

A mask I had not meant
to wear, as if of frost,
covers my face.
Eyes looking out,
a longing silent at song’s core.